George V: Never a Dull Moment by Jane Ridley
Exactly what went on behind that beard? There have been few monarchs quite as discreet and inscrutable as George V, whose nicotine-stained facial hair was just the first of many layers he hid behind, along with his thick Victorian frock coat and his all-consuming, conversation-avoiding addiction to shooting and stamp collecting.
His diaries, which he wrote up every night of his life in schoolboy handwriting, are charmingly, infuriatingly non-committal, giving no evidence of an inner life. “He recorded the time he got up, the time he ate breakfast and the time he went to bed (usually 11.10),” Jane Ridley writes in the preface to her biography, which succeeds, against all the odds, in being superbly un-dull.
